


Drag You Through Heaven

by Rednaelo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anonymous Sex, BDSM, Betrayal, Blood, Childhood Friends, Clandestine Encounters, Crossdressing, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Drama, Drinking, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Felching, Force-Sensitive Phasma, Foursome - F/F/M/M, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Mommy Kink, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Platonic Romance, Pre-Established Kylux, Secret Crush, Seemingly Perfunctory Aftercare, Sexual Tension, Topping from the Bottom, Verbal Humiliation, Violence, erotic asphyxiation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 13:37:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8448049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rednaelo/pseuds/Rednaelo
Summary: On shore leave, Captain Phasma encounters a perfect stranger.  Nobody is perfect, however.  Least of all, this stranger. A story of how three brittle strands tangle and weave together to become a cord of steel.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caedrea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caedrea/gifts).



> A few things:
> 
> 1\. Kylo Ren belongs in dresses.  
> 2\. Snoke is not my design.
> 
> That's all for now.
> 
> -Bec

This one is pretty.  She’s little and soft and has found a quiet place against Phasma’s front; her hands against Phasma’s chest are still and her nails are lacquered in white.  She might be drunk or she might be in love.  Phasma keeps the hand that isn’t holding her glass of wine against the girl’s waist. 

This club, Pandore, is a scab that Phasma keeps finding herself picking at.  Over there in the corner, there used to be a bar table and that’s where she traded her first kiss with a stranger, years ago.  The couch where she preferred sit and people-watch is still there, now occupied by a couple who are leaning so close together their drinks are spilling into each other’s glasses.  The music isn’t for dancing but there’s still a dance floor and plenty of people swaying to the purring bass and dreamy swerves of harmonics.  Phasma didn’t dance – still doesn’t – but she’s let a body or two rock against her to beats just like this.

Nothing much has changed, including her vice for finding pretty ones to hold to her front like they belong to her.  At least for the night. 

Phasma takes another sip of wine – red, because she can’t be bothered with a white this time: there’s a beast behind her ribs – and the lovely girl sighs against her skin and nuzzles closer.

“Who did you come with?” Phasma asks her, one thumb stroking lightly at the place where lace gives way to bare flesh.  She’s always been a fan of the backless dress.

“My friend Tavi,” the sweetling breathes, warm.  “He’s dancing over there.  In the grey Daár-Ketëng.”

Not that Phasma is familiar with this couture but it’s easy enough to spot the young man in silvery drapes being very romantically twirled about the dance floor by another man wearing a black dress.  Phasma raises an eyebrow but she doesn’t have a leg to stand on there, much preferring shirtsleeves and slacks to any sort of frock since the age of two.  Both men cut a striking picture as they dance and Phasma catches a glimpse of gold when the one in black turns to face her.  Then he turns again and Phasma is left with the impression of full lips shimmering like sunlight and gilded eyelashes.

That one is _very_ pretty.  Not little or soft but more than lovely.

“Who’s your friend’s friend?” Phasma asks.  Her hand has slipped to tap a couple fingers – one-two, one-two, impatient – against the girl’s hip.

“Hm?”  Her armful pulls away and twists to look.  “I don’t know him.  But I think Tavi has seen him here before.  Talked about him.”  Phasma feels fragile fingers circle her wrist and slip into her palm.  “Let’s get them; let’s sit and drink.”

Phasma’s glass is now a single sip of burgundy.  She’s seen the decanters they keep behind the bar – they hold two bottles and are cut from Coruscant crystal.  This time, she can afford to put down money for one of the private boxes on the third floor and invite pretty strangers to drink with her there.

“All right,” Phasma agrees.  “I’ll find us a place.”

The song is still playing and the two men are still dancing.  This time, when the one in black finds her watching, he stares back.  His eyes are black too.

* * *

“This really is an absolutely gorgeous vintage,” Tavi says after taking another indulgent draught.  He puts his hand against his chest and collapses back against the other man – Anikalna he said his name was – as if the experience of the wine is almost too much for him to take sitting straight.  And in Phasma’s lap, her young lady Narsis is giggling, the sound of it like tiny field flowers being plucked by the wind. 

“I’m pleased you find it tasteful,” Phasma says.  Narsis plays with one of her hands in both of her own because Phasma’s hands are like weapons and Narsis’ hands are like young doves.  Anikalna has his own hand – gloved in black, all the way to his elbow – splayed intimately over the pale stretch of Tavi’s collarbones, fingers against his throat to feel him swallow the wine.

“We never heard your name,” Anikalna comments.  His voice is so low, he’s barely whispering, and it still sounds like he could hum right along with the bassline that’s playing downstairs.  They can still hear the music; the balcony stretches over the club and the night sky glows over them.  Phasma counts the dark marks that spangle Anikalna’s face and smirks very gently when his full lips glitter gold in a smile at her.

“I’ve kept it to myself,” she says.

“She has, she won’t even tell me,” Narsis sighs again.  They keep falling out of her lips, making her small in Phasma’s lap and Phasma just tugs her a little closer, touch sliding up between Narsis’ dark thighs, parting rosegold shifts of satin.  “Oh….”

“‘Ma’am’ will do,” Phasma says.  She holds out her glass when Anikalna offers the decanter to top her off.  He doesn’t seem to be able to look away from her, gold-lined eyes magnetized to her hands, her lips, her gaze, and though he’s smiling – placid – his black, black eyes are burning.

“Narsis, you look so tiny and lovely in her lap,” Tavi lauds, breathless, dizzy, while he reaches to her with one hand and clutches his wineglass with the other.  With the decanter replaced on the low table nearby, Anikalna has refocused his hands on getting Tavi’s clothes open.  Not wasting any time.  Phasma cracks a full-on grin and it just feels like teeth behind her lips.  Narsis is going, “Oh, oh,” in her lap and Phasma hooks her thumbs into the damp underthings Narsis is wearing to tug them around her knees.

“Hmmm, I’d have to agree,” Anikalna murmurs.  “Will you fuck her?”

“Oh!”

“Yes,” Tavi gasps, breath sharp around his teeth when he sucks it in – his eyes are wide.  “I’d love to.”

“Ma’am, please,” Narsis says before things can play out.  She pushes herself up and turns, her panties falling around her ankle as she faces Phasma on the couch.  Sweet eyes begging, lips wet with wine.  It’s too dark to see but Phasma touches her cheeks and feels her blushing.  “Allow me, too.”

“And I’ll fuck you,” Anikalna is whispering into Tavi’s ear.

“Good with your mouth?” Phasma asks Narsis while she lets those feathery fingers undo the button on her trousers and push her jacket off her shoulders.

“I’ll be good,” Narsis promises.  Tavi parts the silks of Narsis’ skirts and Phasma rolls her hips up so Narsis can bare just enough of her to matter.  “So good….”  Phasma lifts her head and Anikalna is staring at her again, kneeling up with his own skirt hiked to rub his cock between Tavi’s naked thighs.

This is mad.  Phasma hasn’t tasted debauchery like this since her graduation from the academy straight into the military ranks.  She had one night to snatch up as many pleasures as she liked before corseting herself back into her role as Captain once again.  In the city’s neon and simulated starlight, Tavi and Anikalna are shimmering with their hands all over each other.  Phasma lays back with her legs spread and Narsis laps her up with her hands alighted against Phasma’s thighs, fluttering fingers.

The noises Tavi is making are light and lovely compared to the obscene sounds of Anikalna’s fingers spreading him.   He hasn’t even taken his gloves off.

“Those will be soiled,” Phasma notes, gesturing with her chin.  Narsis licks her clit and Phasma slides her tongue between her own teeth.  “Good.  Yes, love, so good.”

“I have more,” Anikalna says, grinning into Tavi’s short hair.  “Can you see him?”

“I see him fine,” Phasma says.  “You stripped him down so quickly.  He’s got a pretty cock.  How many fingers have you got in him?”

“Three.”

“You take them well, Tavi,” Phasma says, eyes smiling.

“Th-thank you, Ma’am,” Tavi shudders.  Phasma runs her hands through Narsis’ hair and tugs a little when she presses her hips up.  “Oh, Nars, you’re so wet….”

“She wants you,” Anikalna says, his other hand reaching to slide between Narsis’ pussy lips, fingering her too.  A tiny noise huffs against Phasma as Narsis tongues at her in earnest.  “You should take her.”

A breeze floats down and catches Anikalna’s lovely black curls, floating the scent of cyanthus flowers and bridesveil across Phasma’s lips.  Her pulse lurches and Narsis closes her lips around Phasma’s labia, suckling gently; Phasma murmurs sweet praises and her eyes flutter closed for a moment when Narsis laps up Phasma’s folds.  Shaking hands grip Narsis’ hips and Tavi presses his cock into her, Anikalna still rocking slowly between his thighs as he does.

The thrusts push Narsis’ face against Phasma’s cunt and she enjoys the thought of all that perfectly done makeup getting smeared on the insides of her thighs like she enjoys the golden kisses that Anikalna is leaving on Tavi’s neck while he finger-fucks him.  She likes the flush going down Anikalna’s throat and she likes how the digits of his gloves are wet while he holds onto Narsis’ hip.

 “God, Ani, please, fuck me too,” Tavi shivers, his words chattering out between his teeth as if he’s freezing to death.

“Ask her,” Anikalna says in a breathless plea and he doesn’t gesture but his eyes are locked on Phasma’s over Tavi’s shoulder.  “Tell her how you want to be fucked.”  Oh, this one is something special, Phasma thinks.  She can feel herself leak onto Narsis’ tongue and Anikalna is smiling still, his golden lashes closing soft over his dark eyes.

“Ma’am, please,” Tavi interrupts and Phasma blinks slowly, wrapping her fingers in Narsis’ black hair, “I want Ani to shove his fat cock in me and milk my prostate until I’m coming hard enough to give Narsis her firstborn, please, please!”

Everyone around her moans in some impromptu harmonization.  Phasma almost laughs, bewildered and wildly aroused.

“You’ve a poet’s mouth full of filth,” she grins.

“Impressive,” Anikalna concurs.

Narsis whines.  Tavi thrusts uncontrollably fucking himself onto the fingers stretching him open.

“Go on, then,” Phasma says, propping her foot up on the table to give Narsis a better vantage.  Anikalna’s eyes flick down to look at her pussy and she smirks at him.  “Fuck him hard enough for me to feel it.”  She takes another sip of her wine.  There’s not a drop of sweat on her brow nor a blonde hair out of place but Anikalna’s pale-and-gilded mask slips a bit and the flush on his neck reaches his ears.  She sees it when he tucks his curls behind them and then guides his cock into Tavi’s arse. 

It’s her own imagining, but when Anikalna hilts himself, Phasma can feel her whole body blaze with that beast inside her and it comes out as a hissed, “Yes…,” on her teeth.  His carved features go slack in pleasure and she pulls harder on Narsis’ hair, imagining it’s his.  When they all rock forward, she rocks back and listens to them crying out in the starlight, breaths sweet with wine.

“Make Narsis come first,” Phasma demands and immediately, Anikalna’s hands move around to find her clit and work at it.  She’s forgotten everything to do with her mouth so Phasma gathers Narsis up by clutching her elbows and lifts her, kissing her, tasting that salt-musk on her tongue and getting wetter for it.  “It’s like they’re both fucking you, isn’t it?” Phasma whispers onto her lips and Narsis _weeps_ for how good it feels.  “Hold up your dress, let me see.”

Rosegold curtains part by restless-dove hands and Phasma circles one finger around her clit while she watches Tavi’s cock disappear over and over into Narsis’ pussy, sweat and cum streaking her black thighs and Anikalna’s gloved hands spreading and rubbing and teasing her.

“You’re so beautiful right now,” Phasma says gently.  “Absolutely stunning.  What’s going to put you over the edge, love?” Phasma carefully cradles Narsis’ chin in her hand.

Narsis can barely get the words out over the heaves slapping into her body.

“Harder!” she cries and squeezes her fingers around Anikalna’s wrists.  Phasma leans back to watch one of Anikalna’s hands spread Narsis’ labia and the other knead at her clit with two wet, leather fingers.  Narsis throws her head back onto Tavi’s shoulder and screams.  Over and over, these gasping, high-pitched moans and the boys fuck her through it until she’s shaking and falling into Phasma’s lap again.  Phasma doles affections over her with wordless pets and contented hums and when she tugs Narsis off of Tavi’s cock, he comes all over her dress.

“Good boy.  Good boy, good girl,” Phasma croons at them.

She’s still smiling, letting Narsis rest where she landed against her hip.  Narsis’ breaths are gusting in each exhale, weaving between Phasma’s fingers as she touches herself.  Tavi, poet that he was, has gone nonverbal, just whimpering while Anikalna milks him for every drop of cum, stain after stain on Narsis’ skirts.  When it becomes too much, only a half-formed curse leaves Tavi’s lips and he scratches at the black gloves until he’s freed to slump to the side and catch his breath.

Anikalna is still hard, his hips a pallid ribbon in the darkness and his cock wet and flushed where he holds it in his fist.

“That couldn’t get you?” Phasma asks him, and between them, their companions are worn and sated, leaving him and Phasma as bookends to their pleasure.

“I need more,” Anikalna admits.  The blush on his chest exposes him more than his disheveled dress does.

“Don’t think I quite have what you need,” Phasma says, pointedly spreading the lips of her pussy so he can see her, pink and wet.  His thick bottom lip gets caught on his teeth and his chest heaves with a groan.

“I’ll take anything,” he grits out.

“Hmmm. Take your own fingers, then.  Keep those gloves on.”

Tavi picks his head up, interested.  Narsis – Phasma would count her for asleep if it weren’t for the way her shaky fingers are stroking against Phasma’s hole like she wants to walk them inside of her.

Anikalna lets out a shaky breath and maneuvers himself, unsteady, into a better position to strip off his undergarments and spread his legs.  He’s already quite loose.  Pleasured frequently, then, Phasma realizes.  Or taken for pleasure.  The way that two fingers immediately push right inside of him indicate practice.  He’s comfortable on his back with his sex exposed; Phasma feels saliva pooling under her tongue while she watches him pump his cock and thrust his fingers.  Tavi curls around Narsis and watches too, halfway looking like he wants to help but mostly looking like he wants to sleep.  Narsis’ fingers match Anikalna’s pace even though she isn’t watching him at all. 

The arm of the couch is an adequate cushion as Phasma’s head rolls back and she lets one breath release all pent up tension.  Her body relaxes, her orgasm rushes up and she holds it back from the brink.  She wants Anikalna to come first.  She wants to see him make a mess of his black gloves and watch the way his seed drips between the cheeks of his arse after it slides down his pelvis.  He’ll make such a lovely, nasty mess….

She lifts her head up just in time to catch him losing it.

His head rears back and his full lips part to let out nothing but a violent breath.  She chases after him and bites her tongue to keep from moaning.  Narsis gives a happy little sound and presses her lips to where Phasma has stilled her fingers against her clit. 

Then there’s the clamorous chime of Phasma’s communicator going off and she clicks her tongue, pulling away from it all to redress and retrieve the damned thing from her jacket pocket.  Time’s up.  She needs to leave now if she wants to make it back to the _Finalizer_ first thing tomorrow morning.

“You’re leaving?” Narsis asks, her disappointment obvious.

“I must,” Phasma says.  She snaps her cufflinks back in place and transfers a few hundred more credits to the tab for her guests’ enjoyment.  “Buy yourselves dinner, on me.  I had a lovely time.”

Anikalna is still sprawled out, debauched and half spilling from his dress.  She doesn’t catch the milky drops of cum on his skin but she does lock eyes with him a bit longer – so dark, he’s watching her, wanting, biting his lip again – before Narsis begs her for a kiss farewell.

Phasma pushes aside the curtains that hide the door and leaves these strangers behind, glad of their time together but gladder still that she will never encounter them again.  She’ll save the memory for nights in her bunk.  The beast curls up again, around her heart, and sleeps, contented.

* * *

There’s no rest for any of them, really, but the crew of the _Finalizer_ have learned to take what they can get.  For the fortnight that the Star Destroyer is hovering in the orbit of Abraxas, crewmembers barter shifts with each other for extended off-time and ferry down to the planet.  As long as the work gets done properly, there aren’t any problems with this and the shuttle companies are making beautiful money with the constant traffic going to and from the _Finalizer_.  Businesses are welcoming, more than happy to accommodate the First Order’s coins in their coffers.

The proprietor of the Plaza Xeiglar is one of the lucky ones: General Hux himself showed up and put down enough credits to rent out the penthouse for an entire week.

Hux has the room privacy set to ‘Do Not Disturb’ and has all of the calls to his room redirected to his personal communicator, which is silenced.  Despite all of this, he is disrupted from his peace – his reports, his brandy, his blessed silence – by a nuisance using their ridiculous whims to unlock and open the door.    

Kylo Ren pulls back the gauzy hood that covers most of his face and whatever scolding Hux was about to give him dies, halted by the wild flush of Ren’s cheeks and his shining eyes that can’t seem to focus.  It’s only for a moment, and Hux gathers his words again.

“Did you find what you needed?” he asks.

“No,” Ren says.  His eyelashes are gold and there’s lipstick smeared on his neck when his hand flicks away his hair.

“My evidence suggests otherwise,” Hux rebuts, eyebrow lifting as he raises his drink to his lips.  It’s difficult to taste it now.

“I found company to keep but I didn’t find satisfaction,” Ren clarifies.  He peels the elbow-length gloves off of his arms and unwinds the leather belts from his waist, pacing as he goes.  As if he can’t bother to hold still.  “You knew I wouldn’t.”

“And you hate proving me right,” Hux says.  It’s very late.  Or very early – the times are blending into each other and Hux hasn’t slept.  Neither has Ren, clearly. His belts fall away and his dress puddles around his ankles and he’s hard in his shorts.  Hux says nothing.  The ice in the glass is almost melted but still quite cold on his tongue.

Wordlessly, Ren stalks off to the shower.  When he doesn’t come out within thirty minutes, Hux goes after him and finds the door open, steam pouring out of it.  The fool doesn’t even bother to close the shower curtain and just stands there, hands against the wall, completely erect but not doing anything about it.  There’s probably more going on in that head, Hux thinks to himself as he rolls up his sleeves and reaches into the shower to shut it off.  He coaxes Ren out with a little pinch to his hip, lets the beast clutch at his elbow as he leads him out, dripping all over the floor. 

“Don’t be so damn stubborn,” Hux chides him, but there’s no ire in it.  He pushes Ren onto the soft sheets and down comforter of his bed and that sopping wet hair makes an impressive splatter on the bedclothes.  He strips down and crawls over Ren’s body on purpose to reach for the lube on the bedside table.  He takes the dildo from the drawer too, because the fool won’t come without _something_ filling him up, no matter what his temperamental carnality might argue otherwise.

“Hux,” Ren huffs against Hux’s dick and Hux shuts him up with it.  Ren doesn’t complain.  He’s like an infant with a pacifier.  And then he smacks Hux’s thigh for thinking it, which only makes Hux laugh.  He lubes up the toy and slicks up his hole, dripping lubricant onto Ren’s wet chest.  “You can’t be serious,” Ren whispers as Hux pulls away and backs up to Ren’s cock.

“If there’s one thing I want you to be aware of,” Hux begins, that fat monster of a cock pressed between the cheeks of his arse, “it’s that I can pleasure myself or pleasure you whenever and however I please, for whatever reason I please.”

“Oh, fuck,” Ren curses.  He plants his feet on the bed and pushes his hips up just as Hux presses Ren’s cock inside of him. “Fuck, you’re tight, fuck, fuck….”

“Use this,” Hux says, his face completely composed save for the bright spots of color on his cheeks.  He sits all the way back on Ren’s cock – Ren is practically gagging on his own gasps – and reaches back to nudge the dildo at Ren’s hole.  One of Ren’s hands scrambles for the bottle of lube but it’s not long before he’s obediently filling himself with the toy Hux has provided for him.  “Now…,” Hux says, lowering himself until he lays comfortably on top of Ren, dick rubbing against those perfectly toned abs.  There’s gold stuck to Ren’s cheek like little celestial freckles.  Hux touches them with his fingers, one after another, and then presses his thumb into Ren’s mouth.  “You know what I’m going to say.”

Ren nods.  He knows.  And his core muscles tighten when a full-body reaction shudders through him, pushing out the dildo just an inch and surging up into the hot clench of Hux around his cock.  He knows but Hux says it anyway, reaching back to fuck him with the toy.  Ren gasps with the loss of Hux against his lips.

“Keep your hands busy with yourself,” Hux commands him in a whisper.  “Don’t touch me unless I say so.  If you come without permission, I’ll hurt you.”

“ _Please_ ,” Ren whines at him.  He’s interrupted the rules.  Maybe Hux would be cross at him another day but this is the first time this has happened.  He rocks back gently onto Ren’s cock and relishes the wet noise of Ren moaning.

“Oh, you _want_ me to hurt you?”

“Fuck me, fuck me, _please_ , you’re so tight!”  The words are rushing out like Ren’s been keeping them in a cage too small for them and they’ve finally burst through the bars.  The sloppy sounds of Ren fucking himself with the dildo are furious enough to make Hux look over his shoulder in curiosity.  Well then.  Ren is scorched with blush and speckled with gold and his chest can’t keep a breath inside it for longer than a second.

Hux leans forward and kisses Ren’s cheek – it’s so dispassionate, Ren hates it when he does that – and then wraps both hands around that thick throat, pressing his thumbs deep into the arterial vessels beneath Ren’s skin.  Ren’s eyes roll back and his mouth falls open.

“The things I do for you, you sorry slut,” Hux sighs at him.  Ren’s cock is throbbing in his arse and Hux doesn’t bother much with moving.  Only enough to catch the head of his cock on the ridges of Ren’s abs.  “It’s better this way, isn’t it?  You like having your useless cock buried inside me while I fuck your hole and fuck your head.  You could’ve gotten anyone else to do this, I even let you try.  But what happened, boy?  What happened?”

“Hux,” Ren gasps.  His stomach is spasming with the force of holding back his orgasm. 

“Mmmh, that’s right, my stupid little fool.  You had to come back to me because no one _fucks_ you like I do.”  Hux pushes his thumbs in harder; Ren’s face is an ugly shade of red and the gold on his cheeks is sparkling.  “Go on now, stuff my arse with your cum.”  Hux lets go.  Ren sucks in a huge breath and orgasms with his nails scrabbling into the comforter for want of digging them into Hux himself.  “Now clean it out,” Hux demands as soon as Ren goes slack against the bed again.  “Be thorough.”

“Yes, Sir,” Ren says.  “May I touch you?”

“You may hold onto my legs but do not touch my cock,” Hux tells him. “Leave the dildo in.”  And then he crawls up Ren’s heaving chest and sits on his face.  Those big hands go right to his arse, spreading him wide as Ren’s greedy tongue goes lapping into him to swallow his own mess.  Hux rolls his eyes.  “Impetuous whore,” he grumbles, but he allows it.  He reaches over to the bedside table again – Ren’s fingers scratching after him, trying to hold him still – and lights up a cigarette, taking a drag as he closes his eyes and rocks his hips.

Beneath him, Ren’s eyes are closed and every now and then his tongue retreats just so he can draw in enough breath to last him.  Hux thumbs a bit of gold away from Ren’s eyelid and then wraps his hand around his cock and comes on Ren’s face.  Obediently, Ren remains still with his mouth open; Hux shakes off the last sticky drops onto his tongue.

Above his head, Ren twists his fingers together, wringing them, panting like he escaped death.  His lips smack together wetly, over and over.  Hux leaves him there and goes to the bathroom to clean up, cigarette between his lips.  He props up one foot on the edge of the bathtub – huge thing, more like a pool – and wipes away the spit, lube and cum that’s chafing at him before tossing the washcloth away.  Overturned on the counter near the sink, a few glasses are lined up and Hux fills one of them with cold water.  It finds its way into Ren’s hand when Hux returns and sees him sitting at the foot of the bed, head between his knees.

“Drink it down,” Hux tells him, stubbing out his cigarette before he pulls his nightclothes on.  He picks up the soiled dildo and rinses it off in the sink before tucking it away again.  Ren is shivering where he sits but the glass is now empty, discarded by Ren’s foot on the floor.  “Lights off,” Hux calls and the room goes dark, the cityscape coming to life from the windows in a completely silent mural of moving stars and gently glimmering neon.  Hux takes Ren by the wrist and tugs him back into the bed, pulling the – still wet, who cares – covers up over them.  He doesn’t face Ren and leaves a distance between them deliberately.

Even so, he says nothing when Ren worms his way in close and slowly wraps those monster arms around Hux’s body.  His knees tuck up and bump the back of Hux’s thighs and Hux falls asleep before Ren ends up nudging his nose to the top of Hux’s spine.

* * *

Phasma doesn’t get hangovers. 

And that’s that.

The sun still hasn’t come up by the time she is awake, packed, checked out of her hotel, commuted, and taking unmistakable strides towards the docking bay of the Capitol Hangar.  She’s dressed in her officer uniform, which only sees the light of day on occasions like these.  First thing she’ll do once she’s aboard the _Finalizer_ is clean her blaster rifle.  Then don her armor.  Then she’ll drill her troopers and get the next squads sanctioned for leave taken care of.  Troop rotation was its own beast and Phasma would be at it all this day and the next two.

Then, perhaps, once all of the companies were squared away for their designated R&R, she’d come back planetside for another night.

Phasma lets herself have five minutes while she settles into the transport that’s set to take her to her ship.  Only five.  One minute to ponder if she wants to visit Pandore a second time in as many days.  Two minutes to determine what her course of action should be if she encounters Narsis or Tavi or Anikalna again.  One minute to confirm that she ought not to repeat the encounter.  A last minute to realize that the wiser choice would be to take Armitage up on the offer he extended her last time.

She’ll have to ask if he’s still willing to entertain her for an evening or two.  Phasma smiles.  Then she lets it fall from her features.  She’s gone too long behind a mask; the ease of never needing to show her face has made her self-control slip.  The transport is quite sparse and none of the other officers or staff present have noticed her fumble.  They’re all nodding off or staring into the middle-distance or buried in their holopads.

Phasma squeezes a gloved hand around the vision of her last night spent in Pandore – its pretty faces and carnal indulgences. 

It’s time to work.

Unescorted, she walks from the docking bay to her quarters and ignores the people who double-take when they see her.  She’s heard all the whispers before.  Her height rather gives her away even without the armor.  Of course, she’s striding efficiently enough to not be caught for anyone’s extended scrutiny.  She’s Captain Phasma, not a zoo exhibit.

It takes a while to reach her quarters.  The _Finalizer_ is a sky city and Phasma has walked its roads enough to know where every avenue will lead.  Even the shortcuts through the ventilation systems are as familiar as the parts of her rifle.  She never takes them, of course.  But she could if she needed to.  There are plenty of the crew who know this ship well but Phasma knows it well enough to win wars. 

Her quarters are close to the barracks, nearer to the docking bays than the high apartments of the other commanding officers, and that was her choice.  This way, Phasma can get to her men quickly and leave with them when they need to go on missions without having to navigate lifts and high-security doors with too many access codes.  Slate grey uniforms give way to the sheen of betaplast armor and Phasma’s next exhale brings her shoulders back, her chin that much higher.

“Ma’am,” she hears from lieutenant after lieutenant.  They recognize her here.  There aren’t any more sidelong double-takes and mutters to companions of, “Could that be-?”  “It must be her….” 

“Ma’am.”

“Ma’am.”

“Captain.”

Troopers on their way from the mess file by in perfect regiments and the last thing Phasma sees before she touches her hand to the access hallway to reach her quarters is a red pauldron vanishing around a corner as XC Company makes their way to the training hall. The door closes behind her when she walks through it and the sounds of the barracks are hushed.  Her quarters are absolutely more extensive than the bunks given to other officers but not nearly as spacious as, say, General Hux’s, who essentially has an entire wing to himself.  Or Kylo Ren who isn’t First Order Navy in the slightest but has made a neat corner of the triumvirate of the _Finalizer’s_ command: he has a converted banquet hall as his living space.

Phasma has a secured hallway that leads to her bedroom, her office, her training room, and a bathroom.  There’s also a back entrance that runs more or less straight to the docking bay but that’s off the books and she has never needed to use it.  It’s there for when the time comes.  There aren’t many who have access to the hallway itself.  She’ll invite officers or troopers to her office if she has things she needs to discuss with them.  Every now and then, Armitage will show his face here too, usually in a professional capacity but sometimes he has a bottle of Çiudelphi Sauvignon with him when he visits.  She keeps wineglasses in a cabinet in her bedroom.

The bag she brought with her to Abraxas gets tossed onto the bed and Phasma strips down to redress in her armor.  She doesn’t mull over the kiss marks between her thighs but pulls on her armorweave body suit and goes straight to her gun case.  The locks flick open when she presses her thumbs to them and Phasma takes her custom built Sonn-Blas F-11D into her arms before settling on the empty floor with it.  Hux had offered to have a weapon bench installed for her but she turned him down. 

“The floor is fine,” she’d told him.  “Academy habit.”

“May it serve you well,” Armitage had answered, raising an eyebrow even though he’d wanted to roll his eyes.  Phasma had seen that impulse too many times to deny it.  Just like Hux could never deny her results.  Personal quirks aside.

The routine is so second-nature; Phasma’s hands work efficiently while she dismantles her weapon and uses the quiet to list her itinerary for today.  XC Company up first, with Companies KL and RZ. They’re doing unarmed drills today, which is sure to give KL-4572 some trouble.  He’s a skilled riot control but without his Z6, he’s all charge and no forethought.  There are others like KL-4572, RZ-5584, for instance.  And RZ-5296.  Phasma pulls the bottle of solvent over and soaks the years-old cotton rag with it, rubbing at spots of grease buildup.

Giving her troops shore leave is a new sort of tactic.  They’re uniformly molded, all of them, and Phasma has taken great care to rear each company to its full potential and know every troop by designation, their strengths and weaknesses.  Propaganda influence works impeccable results but nothing cements a willingness to fight and perform excellently like the promise of gain.  Letting her troops spend some time on Abraxas will show them what the galaxy will look like when they succeed.  Thriving, lively, full of possibilities and riches.  They’ll make memories that will bolster their priorities. 

And those who find their priorities shifted incorrectly will be rooted out.  It is a highly beneficial situation that Phasma lobbied for, insistently.  Her luck is in the fact that General Hux sees her thinking plainly and required only the minimum amount of confirming statistics in her report to pass the notion through.

Companies HS, VQ, SP and MW have already been released, allotted their time planetside, due to return at the end of the day today.  They’ll go back again in another two days after they refresh their training.  The shore leave is all well and good but Phasma will be damned if she lets even one of her troops slack in their condition for it.

Cleaning her rifle takes the better part of an hour and by the time she’s satisfied, she knows the expected Companies will all be in the training room, done with their warm-ups and ready to drill properly.  The blaster won’t come with her to the training but at least it is ready for when she needs it.  Phasma locks it up properly, puts away all of her cleaning kit, then opens her armor locker.

Each piece is gleaming, perfectly polished and Phasma looks down at her face in the reflective surfaces and finds her eyes full of pride.  One by one, she straps the plates over her armorweave suit, clipping her cape on before taking her helmet from its place.  She settles it over her head and takes a slow breath as it hisses and locks.  The visor displays flicker over her line of sight and then fade away again.

Days ahead and battalions to hone. Phasma will whet them and then ready them to be wielded for the purposes of the First Order.  Long May It Reign. 

She leaves her quarters and there are no whispers as she passes now.

* * *

Hux returns when dawn is pulling a pale ring over the horizon and Kylo snaps the blinds shut to keep the light out.  The door opens behind him and another yellowish glow floods in.

“Good lord, what on earth are you dressed like that for?” Hux asks with the sort of long-suffering sigh that would fool anyone but Kylo, who can touch his thoughts like a veil and still feel the ruffle of Hux’s composure being disturbed.

“You didn’t think I’d be here,” Kylo tells him what he already knows.

“I didn’t think you’d be garbed up like you’re about to sally off with your Knights,” Hux says, hanging up his coat in the closet and then picking a few ginger cat hairs from the sleeves.  “Don’t tell me that’s why you’re lurking in the dark like this,” Hux suddenly interrupts himself, brow lowering in displeasure. “This isn’t your idea of a romantic farewell before you depart for some unknown time and purpose.”

“I’m not leaving,” Kylo says gently, though his mask compresses each word and hisses them out with twice as many teeth.  He doesn’t mention to Hux how he can see his shoulders drop that half a centimeter and the softening of lines between his eyebrows.  In his chest, Kylo’s heart kicks up and he tightens his fingers into his fists to stall himself from running to him.

“Then why, pray tell,” Hux says and doesn’t finish, simply gesturing to Kylo’s ensemble of black and mask.

“I didn’t bring many other clothes with me,” Kylo says.  “This was clean.”

“The mask too?”

“I was out.”

“I suppose you couldn’t go and buy yourself new frocks dressed like that,” Hux mutters and peels off his gloves, his belt.  “Shall I purchase some for you?”

Kylo takes unhurried steps and folds his fingers over Hux’s before he can undress himself any further.

“You would,” is all he says, not asking, not inquisitive.  He’s picking up the answer as Hux thinks it so the point in asking is moot. 

“Would you like for me to immortalize you in sonnets?” Hux sneers at him and all Kylo can hear is him thinking, ‘ _You’re too lovely for your own good, you stupid, beautiful fool._ ’  His hands grip Hux’s dearly.  There’s a searing flash of memory that he picks up in a weaving train of thought.  The gowns and the grip and Kylo’s past meeting with Hux’s in unexpected places.  Phasma is there. 

She was, with him, with them, with Hux, back on the _Finalizer_.  She was unarmored and sweating, smiling, blood on her upper lip and blaze in her eyes.  She clasped Hux’s forearm as he did hers, their gaze sustained.   Good news?  Yes, her troops….  Hux was telling her about their successful invasion of a planet divided between its Resistance forces and inept government.  The Resistance was in retreat.  The troopers were making good headway in dismantling what remained of the power structure.

“Come by next time you’re planetside,” Hux had said to her.  “We’ll celebrate.”

And she had grinned and nodded at him.  The surge of heat that strikes him through…. Is it Hux’s or is it his own?

“What are you doing there?” Hux asks him.  He knows what Kylo has taken, of course.  But Kylo sinks to his knees and parts the zipper of Hux’s trousers and presses him back to the wall.  “Why Phasma?”

“She’s….  I’d never seen her without her armor,” Kylo mumbles and pulls Hux’s cock out of his pants, sipping on his bewilderment of frustration and awkwardness and arousal.  Tastes sour and sweet and bitter and Kylo’s mouth is watering.  He uses his other hand to unlatch his helmet, tips it up just enough to expose his mouth.  Like this, he’s blinded, but he strokes Hux’s cock with one gloved hand and mouths kisses to his hand, his wrist, pushing up his sleeve to get at the pale skin of his arm.  He traces the place Phasma held Hux with his tongue, going by memory alone, guided by his whimsy in the Force.

“She’s something, isn’t she,” Hux says, almost conversational though his breath is slipping out loosely.  An unoccupied thumb finds one of Kylo’s curls and he twirls it with a kind of absent interest.

“Mmh.”  Kylo braces himself with his fingers around Hux’s forearm and then wraps his lips around his cock and tongues at the slit.  _You’ve known her a long time._

“God, it’s so bizarre when you do that,” Hux groans.  He’s rolling his hips and Kylo can see himself through Hux’s eyes: on his knees, garbed in all black and that mask – _it’s ghastly_ – but it’s a not such a stalwart symbol when Hux has his prick down Kylo’s throat.  Kylo kneads at himself through his pants and nudges Hux back towards Phasma, his murmur in his mind.  “We…ah, we went to the academy together.”

 _You’re friends_.

“Of a sort.  Must we discuss this now?  It’s…rather uncouth.”

 _You don’t want to think of her while you fuck me_.  Kylo pulls off with a noisy slurp and catches his breath in pants, exhaling them hot against Hux’s erection.  His lips are chaffed with the scratch of those groomed, ginger pubic hairs against the softer bits of his skin.  Feels indulgent and naughty and he still can’t see but his cock is starting to wet the inside of his clothes.

“Rather, no,” Hux says and takes Kylo by the back of the head so he can thrust into his mouth deeply and gag him.  “That you’re focused enough to whisper in my mind tells me I should redouble my efforts.”

 _Bastard,_ Kylo growls but he’s on his knees and Hux knocks that damn helmet off his head so he can knot his fingers into those flyaway curls.  Pale features turn an ugly, splotched red and Hux feels Kylo’s throat contract in a lurch around him.  He pulls back quickly before he ends up with more mess than he’s really happy with and admires the thick strand of drool that his cock smears against Kylo’s cheek.  He coughs and coughs and Hux pets his hair, going shh-shhhh.  It’s more than a little patronizing but Hux’s bare hand cups, cold, against his cheek and Kylo shudders a sigh. 

“Come on, now,” Hux bids him and catches him by the chin to pull him up.  Kylo goes willingly.  Spit drips off his chin and Hux’s eyes scorch like a manganese flame, taking in the sight of him.  “Tell me the truth.”  Hux wraps his fingers around Kylo’s hood and pulls it up, tugging him nearer by it.  “You were looking at the blood on her mouth.”

Kylo pushes down his pants just enough to press his erection against Hux’s.  He holds them together and ruts, hidden by his hood with Hux’s face near enough to kiss.

“I found her,” Kylo confesses.  Hux licks at his mouth.  “The other night, I met her at that sex club.”

“You fucked her?” Hux asks him.  The whisper gets spit off his tongue and Kylo swallows it down, his cock leaking onto Hux’s and slicking his fingers as he strokes them both.

“Not with my body; we never touched,” Kylo hisses out.  Hux tilts his head into the billow of the hood and bites the sharp angle of Kylo’s jaw, teeth sinking in as if to come back with a piece of Kylo.  “She didn’t know…. I gave her a false name.”

“Smart,” Hux snorts against Kylo’s ear.  “If she knew, she’d strangle you.”

“I’d let her,” Kylo sighs and Hux growls at him.  “She’s like you.”

“There’s no comparison,” Hux says.  Kylo rolls his hips and steals into Hux’s thoughts to pick him apart.  “Stop that.”

“You’re jealous,” he laughs and tightens his grip, pulling himself even closer with his arm around Hux’s shoulders, giggling like a boy while he comes, manic and blushing.  “Of us both….”

 _“Ren,”_ and he might be cursing him and he might be gritting his name out like an affirmation while he shakes apart in his own orgasm but Kylo doesn’t bother to look and instead just lets Hux mash their mouths together by yanking on his hood.  His hand slides back and forth along their cocks and Hux’s breath tastes like bitter smoke and sweet liquor, his teeth sharp and smooth.  It’s hot in his robes; Kylo is sweating into the fabric and it clings, clammy to him.  If he could he’d peel off all the layers in an instant but he lets Hux’s cum dirty his trousers while the aftershocks tremble in his thighs.

For a moment, Kylo has the close darkness of the two of them underneath his hood and that frenzied energy of a secret shared and their pleasures chasing after each other. 

“Did you want her?” Kylo asks and he’s sincerely asking this time.  He could look but he wants to _hear_.

Hux pulls the hood back and breaks the heat and shadows.  They’re breathing again.  In the dim lighting of the penthouse, Hux’s cheeks are a dusky red and Kylo lets him go.  If he grabbed for him now, gloves all sticky with seed, Hux wouldn’t appreciate it.  Now’s not the occasion for inviting reprimand; there are better things to focus on.  More interesting mysteries….

Hux turns away and continues undressing himself, though the backs of his ears are the same color as his cheeks and Kylo stares at them while he tugs off his own cloak.

“She didn’t start turning heads until we were sixteen,” is what Hux says as he discards his trousers.  He scrunches his nose at them and just lets them fall from his hand.  His face goes soft again when he picks up the memories.  “That autumn, Fallmouth tried to kiss her and she dislocated one of his ribs.”

Kylo doesn’t smile but there’s a thrill spiraling down his spine.

“We were students and the next thing I knew, she was bestowed a suit of chromium armor and that’s who she became,” Hux says.

“You’ve skipped quite a lot,” Kylo prods at him.

“Were you hoping to gossip over sexual fantasies like the boys did back at school?” Hux sneers as he tugs a dressing gown out of his closet.  There’s more than just annoyance radiating off of him.  Kylo feels around its edges and comes back with spikes that have been set up like walls.  But they don’t surround Hux’s secrets, no, he’s still letting them out like he’s bleeding pus from an old wound.  “She’s my comrade and my colleague and the Lord of the Stormtroopers.  I won’t disrespect her with degrading ideations of _fucking_ her.”

“You can keep what you feel for her now,” Kylo says gently.  He’s naked now, carefully closing his fingers around Hux’s wrist.  Not to shackle, but just to remind him that he’s there.  “I just wanted to know.  How you felt when you were young.”  Hux glances back at him, long-suffering in thin tilt of his chin.  It puts his nose in the air and his hair was perfect when he came in but now it’s mussed.  His lips are still a little wet.  “I’ve never had a crush.  Not on a girl.  Not on a woman like her.”

Hux’s smirk picks at the corner of his mouth and Kylo wants to kiss that spot.

“Did you want one vicariously?” Hux asks and then shakes his head because it’s ridiculous.  He’s going to indulge Kylo anyway.  “You have a crush already but it’s colored by the torrid nature of your adult attractions.”

“I just want to know,” Kylo insists, and lets Hux tug him and push him so he falls on the bed.

“I didn’t pull my cock to thoughts of her,” Hux says with a sigh, just to get it out of the way.  Kylo snorts.  “I was twelve and would sometimes think about asking her to marry me when we graduated.  By the time graduation was upon us, she was a woman and she was a warrior and she would be no one’s bride.  The backs of her hands were soft but I don’t recall a time when her palms weren’t calloused.  Her handwriting is impeccable.  She’s always been taller than me; she was the height she is now when she was fourteen.”

Kylo turns onto his stomach and stretches over the sheets, rolling his shoulders.  His eyes close.

“She didn’t _date_ , no one _courted_ her,” Hux says.  The bed dips when he sits down next to Kylo.  “She would spend holidays on this very planet and become someone entirely other.  We’d share wine from the same glass.  I watched her flirt and kiss and pick up strangers – boys and girls alike.  We’d go back to the academy grounds and her smile would get locked away and she’d be a weapon once again.”

The silence sweeps in like Hux tugged a curtain of it into the middle of his maudlin reminiscing.  Kylo flicks at its edges with the back of his hand, teasing but respectful enough to not rip it down.  He waits and entertains himself with thoughts of Phasma back at Pandore, smiling the way she was that night.  There was nothing else in the world for her to worry over.  If there was, all contingencies were well in hand.  She was at rest. 

“She’s keen on keeping her business and pleasures separate,” Hux suddenly cuts into the quiet.  “Don’t ever let her learn who you are.”

“As if she would break,” Kylo scoffs, pushing himself up from the bed to look Hux in the eyes.

“I won’t have you disrespecting Captain Phasma,” Hux says.  “Do not play games with her principles.”

“What’s her name?” Kylo whispers, crawling close.

“Ren,” Hux warns him.

“She brought you with her when she went to the clubs,” Kylo says, bringing his hands to touch Hux’s curling fists.  “She let you drink her wine.  That’s not quite ‘separate’ if you ask me.”

“Phasma can draw her own boundaries; they’re not for me to define,” Hux tells him.

“And she drew them to make you an exception.  You’re not a fool; you realized this.”

“I’m content with my lot.”

“Liar,” Kylo hisses at him and bites his chin, a little nip, and then ducks away before Hux can shove at him.  Laughing, he snags Hux’s wrists and draws him onto his body, stroking down his sides and holding his hips.  “You can respect her and still admit it: you’d love to know how much she might include you in her pleasures.”

“You can tease me like this only because you threw yourself over that line,” Hux says and his nose is twitching with how he’s trying to keep his lips from curling up. 

“She’s an amazing lover,” Kylo admits in a murmur and something unwillingly snaps in Hux’s control.  It translates as a shiver and a slow blink. 

“How do you know, she never touched you,” Hux asks and he _knows_ he’s tempting his own principles on the matter.  Kylo sweeps them away and presses his mouth to Hux’s in a grin.

“She still made me come,” he whispers and Hux’s gasp is almost inaudible but Kylo catches it on his tongue.

* * *

In her armor, Phasma is what she was born to be and grew to become. She bears it like the teeth in her own skull: the role was made for her very DNA.  And still, out of her armor, away from the _Finalizer_ , the thing that rests beneath her ribs begins to blossom open like a great red serpent, uncoiling.  Something altogether familiar and still new folds over her, invisible but present.  She’s been feeding this beast too much, Phasma thinks.  There have been too many days, too near to each other, that she’s spent putting away her armor and pulling on slacks, shading her eyes in grey. 

Phasma melts from one metamorphosis to another as naturally as she inhales and exhales but the beast is unruly.  She goes to the hotel where Hux is staying while there’s hunger sitting like a fire behind her bones.  Pandore and its temptations rear up, addictively, and Phasma clenches her teeth in a smirk when she thinks of it, her hand clutching a little tightly around the neck of the bottle she’s carrying.  Black mead.  Armitage won’t ever admit it but he favors the sweet liquors, no matter how much brandy he might knock back.

He won’t quite understand but he will understand better than anyone else would.  Maybe she’ll invite him out with her. Maybe he’ll go.  Maybe they can do something foolish and tell each other to forget about it the next day.  Phasma almost laughs over the thought and just passes into the rather glorious atrium when the doorman opens the way for her. 

Gold and pearl, carved marble and gleaming platinum.  Let it be said that when Hux indulged, it was with opulence.  The hotel itself is quite new.  She is sure Hux had chosen it solely for the décor and the distinct possibility that they would give him largest suite without him even having to ask.  She scans the lobby, looking for the direction of the lifts, and gets snagged on the staircase.

He’s there.  Anikalna.  It’s him, it couldn’t be anyone else.  Phasma catches her breath in her throat and her body is instinctively tightening into attention, her senses going keen as her spine straightens and her posture molds itself into alertness.  She halfway lifts the bottle like she wants to clutch it to her as she would with her Sonn-Blas. 

Wrapped in curves of black satin, shimmering petals folded over his form that hide and reveal him in equal measures, Anikalna is a song in a silent hall.  He’s a splash of blood on freshly fallen snow: all of a sudden vibrant and arresting and Phasma feels the beast that she bears – and is – lick its teeth and _covet_.   There’s a sparkle of something at either of his shoulders and the neckline of his dress plunges low, showing off pale skin and wine-colored bruises of some lover’s lips and attentive tongue.  He wears them like jewels; they match the slick of his glossed lips. 

And he sees her.  One after the other, his feet peek out from the dusk-and-black drapes of his gown as he descends the steps and he’s not looking at anything but her.  His eyes are sparkling and there’s a flush to his cheeks. 

Lingering is a mistake.  The fractions of seconds tick by and Phasma feels each one like they’re individual shards of fiberglass being pushed into her palm: don’t stay, don’t stay, don’t let him speak, don’t call his name, don’t pick up what you have put down and left behind.  She bleeds out the wisdom no matter how heavily it pulses through her and her chance is gone. 

“It’s you,” he says, and it’s just a breath in an empty hallway but she hears him and feels the words like a laugh against her neck.  She would have just smiled and nodded cordially.  She would’ve done it, banned the creature back into its cage and gone to meet with Hux to good-humoredly poke fun at their foolishness and vices.  But Anikalna speaks these two words in a murmur as if the world hadn’t existed until was there at the foot of the staircase.  Like the marks on his neck are just remnants from a dream he had of her that manifested itself so poignantly.  His arms are sleeved in black but his hands are bare this time.  When he reaches her, he extends one softly, entreating.   “Did you forget me, Ma’am?”  So quiet….

Phasma throws her cage open.

“I would never be so careless,” she says to him, taking his hand.  He shivers, eyes fluttering closed – he’s shaded them in smoke and blood and stars – and she has to have him.  He lets her draw him close and his other hand comes to rest on her shoulder.  “I had not expected to see you again,” Phasma says.  He’s close enough now that she can smell his perfume.  Her head tilts, turning so she can consider following the impulse to press her nose to his curls and drink the scent of him down.  Cyanthus and bridesveil…. His hand is warm in hers and his breath is sweet as he pours himself into her eyes. 

Phasma realizes that last time they were in company, she never actually touched him. Her memories are trying to insist that she pressed all the way inside of his body and he was wrapped around her like he didn’t know what would happen if he let go. 

“Now that you _have_ seen me again,” he leads, eyes dark and lashes darker, “what are you expecting?”

Phasma wraps an arm around his waist and finds a cascade of delicate chains hanging between bare shoulders, draping Anikalna’s naked back.  Her fingers settle against warm, bare skin at his spine and she pulls him just that much closer.

“That I’ll not want to let you leave,” she says, squeezing softly at his fingers.  “Which would be quite a terrible thing; I’m due elsewhere in a matter of minutes and I’ve certainly interrupted you on your way out.  You look exquisite tonight.  I know you were off to share it with someone.”

Anikalna’s laughter is soundless, like gasps falling after each other.  He brings her hand to his cheek and presses the bold and crooked ridge of his nose against her thumb, almost lovingly.

“You’re not wrong,” he admits.  She sees his blush reach his ears and her mouth is wet while she watches.  “A stolen moment wouldn’t be too much trouble, would it?  A last bit of time, since I’ve found you again.   The bar in the hotel is dark and they have plenty of nice things I can fill your glass with.”

He’s smiling in a way that makes the grand chandeliers that feel miles above them sparkle across the bloodslick that is his smile.  There’s gold glitter in the lines of his lips and she admires it, wondering if it’s fine enough that if she tasted it, it would slip down her throat, unnoticed.  Anikalna is breathing slowly, deeply, and when she looks up again, that flush is still lingering on his cheeks. 

“If you’re trying to seduce me, you’re being quite successful,” she tells him and he laughs again.  “But I won’t be outdone.” 

Phasma steps away but keeps his hand and he goes quite willingly where she leads. 

She has studied the layout of the whole hotel because, by god, she will not be caught off guard anywhere, and especially when in the company of her friend and General.  So she knows where the bar Anikalna mentioned is.  She takes him there instead of letting him invite her.  They tuck themselves into the darkest corner and Phasma puts away the black mead she brought in favor of a slim bottle of olyseum liqueur.  It was his pick but Phasma isn’t displeased with his taste. 

“I just can’t believe my luck,” Anikalna is saying, a laugh still caught on the curve of his lips while she pours a drink for him into a cut crystal flute.  “Tavi and Narsis would envy me if they knew.”

“Do you keep in touch with them?” Phasma asks him and pours for herself.  Anikalna hasn’t taken a sip yet, rather preoccupied with the way the bubbles of the glass bead up in tiny streams in the bluish liquor. 

“They were strangers that night and that didn’t change when I left.”

“You’re an adventurous type, then,” Phasma says and reaches across the short space between them to brush back the curls from his neck.  His eyes flutter closed for a moment; a sigh slips out and leaves a smile behind.  “Many playmates…. Many memories.”  She grins at him, knowing, as she strokes her thumb against his hickeys.  “We play the same game.”

“You don’t display your trophies,” Anikalna comments and leans a little closer.  He takes a drink and leaves behind a smear of rouge on the glass before setting it down.

“Does it do your advertising for you?” Phasma asks, smirking at him and his nose crinkles up in a way that’s sweet and ugly.

“I’ve only been playing a short while,” he says.  “I’m marked so I remember whose rules I play by.”

“Oh, so you already belong to someone,” Phasma remarks, the pinch of bitterness fleeting when she remembers that she couldn’t have kept him even if she wanted to forsake her own rules to do it.  Anikalna smiles. 

“Would you steal me away?” he asks.  Her fingers firm and grip his neck gently, tugging him just so and he falls into her space, catching himself on her arms and breathing her breath.

“I wouldn’t,” she says.  And maybe she’s cruel and maybe she sees his eyes narrow as if he knows she’s concealing some deeper truth from him.  “I might be tempted to borrow you, though.”

“I’d steal you,” he tells her.  His soft, soft words have given way to a rumbling murmur and where his gaze has been gentle, there’s the glint of _intent_ that Phasma knows so well.  His hand slides beneath her jacket and settles on her waist, drawing her closer to him like she pulled him to her.  “Were we reversed, I’d snatch you in a heartbeat.”

“I think I ought to be flattered,” she laughs against his lips and their foreheads bump together.  His chuckles come out in melodious hums and she digs her nails in – light and biting – at the back of his neck just to hear him interrupt his joy with a gasp.  “You couldn’t steal me, you wicked boy.”  Her other hand leaves behind her glass and she cups his jaw with it, turning him this way and that like she’s inspecting him and he’s just limp in her hold, letting her.  “But no one could keep me in the first place.”

“I wouldn’t try, but I’d want to,” Anikalna admits.  “I want to.”

“Sweet nothings,” she tells him and lets him kiss her neck, leaving a press of his lipstick behind.  His hair has that perfume that’s going to bewitch her for the rest of her life if she even catches a hint of its notes elsewhere.  His big hands hold her: one tucked around her waist, the other trembling as it rests against the other side of her neck.

“I’ve been obsessing,” he whispers into her ear, shifting so one knee presses forward between her legs.  “Since that night I’ve been suffocating under thoughts of you and what you did to me.  Thinking on your words and your eyes and you….  You were so close but I couldn’t catch you even for a moment.  You were gone before I could get my fingers between yours.”

“What other romances have you been concocting, darling?” she asks him while she plays with his hair and his restless fingers massage at her like he wants to stroke her all over.  Phasma’s eyes slide closed and she lets a smile rest on her lips.  Arousal slithers back and forth in her veins, slow and sluggish.  She traces her fingers up and down his spine, toying with the glittering chains on his dress. 

“That,” he says, halted, as if he caught it and has to pause to make sure it’s still in his hands.  “You…calling me sweet things.”

“If that’s all you wanted….” Phasma smiles and pushes him back a little.  She adjusts her shoulders against the booth seat and then pats a hand on her lap.  “Put your head here, pretty, I’ll be gentle to you.”

Dumbfounded, Anikalna gapes at her, kneeling there in the booth with his fists clenched over his knees, given up on poise and is just a boy in a dress and makeup and she resists sniggering at him.  Because she still rather likes his dark-as-black eyes and his soft curls and plush lips.

“It’s all right,” she coaxes him and his eyes don’t leave her as he begins to lower himself down.  “Be here with me for a while.  I’ll keep you warm and loved while I have you.”

He makes a noise like a whimper but she doesn’t catch it, watching him turn over so he can press his cheek to her thigh.  Phasma threads her fingertips into the strands of his feathery curls and he covers her hand with his own, hiding his eyes from her.  When he sighs, she can feel it against her stomach, pressing her shirt against her abdomen. 

The bar is quiet and dark and from where they sit, there’s no one in sight.  Anikalna might end up smudging his makeup on her trousers but Phasma is hard-pressed to care.  She can only think about his eyelashes tickling the palm of her hand and the slow stroke of his thumb against her wrist.

“There’s a good boy,” she croons gently to him, closely-trimmed nails scratching at his scalp.  “Be still, I have you now.  It’s all right.”

His knees come up to tuck against his stomach.  Phasma reaches her other hand to rub at the back of his neck and smiles down at him.  This isn’t like anything she gets to indulge in nowadays.  She has her troops to raise and train and mold and command and maybe even on days when her feet touch solid earth, she can find some pretty face to come linger at her side.  Years, it’s been, since she’s been anyone’s glimpse of tranquility. 

There was a night, once, with Armitage, before they graduated.  He hadn’t expected it and she didn’t realize she had it in her, but in her arms, he had been small and she was the only thing between him and the maw of the future.  She was so strong there.

She’s there again now, thinking that she’s not imagining something warm and wet soak into the cloth of her slacks.

“There now, love,” she murmurs.  “Sweet flower….  Don’t cry, I’m here.”

“Oh, Ma’am,” he shudders out, voice catching in his throat and coming out in only a whisper.  He clutches her hand tightly to hide his eyes and his tears seep into the fine lines of her palm.  Phasma’s heart swells and thrums.  Her blood is hot in her veins and the heat is stretching out into her every limb.  There’s nothing in the universe except for her and this lovely little boy in her lap, crying his makeup off.  He was so bold and beautiful before and with the quietest word, he tore himself down for her. 

Phasma doesn’t know what this will do to her in the days to come.  She doesn’t know if she can come visit Armitage here, knowing she might tangle herself with Anikalna if she happens to see him again.  She’ll want to….  And when the week is over, she’ll leave him behind and there won’t ever be a next time. 

Anikalna trembles and shifts and his arm wraps around her waist until he can bury his face in her stomach.  She melts over him, bending forward to string kisses in his curls, against his temple, the shell of his ear.  When she sees how pink it is, she chuckles and then closes her lips around its edge to give a little nip.  His chest hitches with a caught breath and she whispers to him.

“I’ll be mummy if you like.”

Anikalna makes a noise that is all want and half again despair and clings to her like a child.  She can hear him going, “Mama, mama,” over and over again.  Her head feels hot but her heart is wracking wildly and she hasn’t had anything quite like this before, no matter how she might’ve thought she had.  Not like this.  Never this deeply.

Phasma gathers him up and sits him in her lap, tucks him right under her jaw and keeps her arm wrapped around his waist while he snivels into her neck.  His voice is deep and he isn’t _sobbing_ , per se, but these little noises keep coming out like he’s trying not to let them but he wants to, so badly.  Phasma picks up the crystal flute and hums at him with a tap of her fingers to his hip to get his attention.  The glass is pressed to his lips and she tips it up for him to drink while he steadies it with her.

“Don’t fret, so,” she says to him as he takes the glass from her and clutches it to his chest.  Right then, her communicator chirps in her pocket.  It’s Hux, of course.  Phasma frowns and so does Anikalna.

“You’re going to leave,” he says.  His eye makeup has streamed down his cheeks in two dark rivers and the red of his lips has feathered beyond its original outlines.  “And I won’t have this again, ever.  Neither of us will.”

“I’ll make you a promise,” she says.  His shoulders are already sagging, a sigh released like it was his lifeline.  She smiles because he figured out that she wanted this as badly as she did.  “I’ll come for you again.  I’ll meet you at the lobby’s staircase in two days.  And all my evening will be yours alone.  Fair?”

“Yes, but I want more,” Anikalna murmurs, snuggling in tighter to her and making her laugh against his curls. 

“You’ll have plenty,” she assures him. 

When they kiss it is sticky and hot against Phasma’s lips and she thumbs away tears from his face like she licks into his mouth – tenderly.  His tongue is sweet with liqueur and she wants to spend the rest of the night getting drunk off of him.  He drops his glass on the table and mashes his chest to hers.  Like rapidfire echoes their pulses rattle against each other; Phasma can almost taste the blood behind his lips. He leaves tears on her face and his heartbeat in her mouth.

* * *

Hux can’t help but raise his eyebrows when he opens the door to admit Phasma.  She’s _wrecked_.  Gorgeous and statuesque and wearing one of her favorite suits and she has red smears all over her skin, splotches of black against her cheeks.  There’s lipstick on her mouth, slanted, like a cut.  She’s still fetching and Hux wars with half-and-half impulses of admiration and greed.

“Might I come in, General?” she asks him, eyebrows answering his, lifted and her mouth unimpressed but she’s keeping back a smirk.  He probably looks a fool, gawping at her so.  But she’s not exactly pristine at the moment either.  They’ve got their complementary reasons for embarrassment.

“Please,” Hux says and steps back to admit her.  “Though, dear lord, don’t call me that here and now.  I’ve quite put my stripes aside while I’m ashore.”

“Do not lie to me, Armitage, you were reading the reports before I came up the lift,” Phasma says as she presses a large bottle into his hands and then goes straight to his restroom.  She runs the sink and when she comes back, her hair is wet and slicked back.  The slash over her mouth has been rubbed off onto a white fleece around her neck and she works at the clouds on her face. 

“Black mead,” Hux remarks, staring down at her gift instead of staring at her.

“Pop it open, then, let’s sit and drink like old men with nothing more interesting to do,” Phasma says.

“Well you obviously had something more interesting to do,” Hux says as he snaps off the wax seal to the bottle.  Phasma laughs.

“Jealousy is so very ugly on you,” she says as she comes up behind him and takes the bottle from his hands.  Hux opens his mouth to protest and she puts a stalling hand on his shoulder.  There’s water dripping down her neck into the collar of her shirt.  “I do apologize for my tardiness.”

“Apology accepted,” he says, though the press of his lips is tight and his eyes are narrowed.  She smiles and shakes her head at him.

“Next time I’ll bring the pretty with me and you can have a taste too,” Phasma teases him.  Hux wrinkles his nose and turns again to produce wine glasses for the both of them.

“No, thank you, I’ll do without,” he says, pulling two Montrachet vessels from the cabinet.

“Then you can sit to the side and look on so I won’t be denying you my excellent company.”

“And I’ve done enough of that for a lifetime as well,” Hux says.

“What’s gotten up your arse, Armitage?” Phasma asks him. She fills pours into the glasses he offers and sets the bottle down before taking the one offered to her.  “Come clean.   Drink your sweet poisons and tell me.” 

Hux lowers himself into the nearest armchair and lifts his glass to his nose to smell.  The bouquet of the dark wine instantly takes him away from all past and present and only leaves him with the solace of its interconnected memories: every occasion he has had this cupful stringing together with its contexts of pleasure and indulgence and the comfort of reliving what he has habitually denied himself.  Hux takes a sip as he decides to give up.  Phasma sits on the sofa across from him and wipes at the lipstick on her neck, checking her fingers to see if they come away red.

“I’ve taken a lover,” he just admits, and leans back in his chair, turning over the taste of honey and ash on his tongue. 

“Well, we both have our planetside playthings,” Phasma says, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“No, I’ve taken one rather permanently,” Hux says, shaking his head as he tilts his glass to-and-fro.  He looks right at her because if he looked away now, he’d shame himself.  “Kylo Ren.”

Phasma, appropriately, makes a face like Hux just spontaneously started speaking backwards.  She blinks slowly and her features are only furrowed in two lines between her eyebrows, her hands cupping the glass in front of her.

“Well, is he any good?” is what she asks.  And Hux falls apart, shaking himself to pieces with mad laughter.  God, he always can count on her to be completely candid with him when there aren’t uniforms in the way and only a few glasses of alcohol between them.  She’s still his friend.  Phasma is still the only one he’d ever trust with anything vulnerable about himself.

“He’s plenty,” Hux says after he puts himself back together and she’s just smiling and shaking her head, looking pleased.

“A handful, I’m sure,” she says.  “Cor, how did that even come about?  You couldn’t spare a moment sooner to give me the news?”

“As if any of us have time for catching up with each other,” Hux sighs.

“Well you obviously had time for Kylo Ren to catch up,” Phasma points out with a smirk.  “Suppose I should be the jealous one now.”

Hux waves the words away and turns his face, hoping the high spots of color on his cheek aren’t visible enough for her to catch.  He tucks his nose into his glass to drink and keep up the pretense of having enough composure after that particular implication.

“He’s more trouble than he’s worth,” Hux mutters.

“I think that’s all you would ever want for yourself,” Phasma says.  “You couldn’t humor anyone who bored you. You’re too ambitious.”

Hux is half-tempted to plead that having ambition shouldn’t equate not having a moment’s peace but stops himself before that foolishness escapes and just shrugs one shoulder up.  That’s an argument he would never win.

“Where is he, then?” Phasma asks.  “Surely he’s been spending time with you here.”

“Oh, he has,” Hux said.  “I pushed him out for the evening so he’s off doing as he likes.  I didn’t want him interrupting.” 

She’d know his face if she saw it.  And that was the sort of storm that Hux didn’t feel like bracing himself for.  It made him gulp down the rest of his glass a little carelessly, thinking of it.  Hux had never seen Phasma get tangled up with anyone who worked aboard the _Finalizer_.  She didn’t even have trysts with the other students at the academy.  It was always strangers.  No-names.  Faces that were pretty but easily put aside and forgotten when it was time to move on from them.  There was no telling how she’d react to learning she’d been deceived by Kylo Ren, of all people.  Deceived, seduced…. 

God, this was going to rear up eventually and Hux was going to be at the eye and epicenter. 

Better to stall now and drink away the truth.

“Top me off?” Hux asks as he stretches out his glass towards Phasma.

“Last I remember, you were telling me precisely what you thought of Lord Ren.  I believe your word of choice was, ‘impudent.’”

“That much hasn’t changed,” Hux scoffs.  Phasma fills up his glass but then takes it from him and pats the space next to her on the sofa.  He goes right to her, grinning back at her when she returns the glass to his hand.  “He’s vexatious and immature and I’m a fool but I’ve never been quite so satisfied.”

“We can be fools, us both,” Phasma says, bumping her shoulder against his.  “On the field he’s ruthless and on the ship he’s either a specter or a nuisance depending on what mood has him.  What’s Lord Ren like when you peel his layers back?”

Hux mutes himself a moment longer by taking a deeper draught and comes to the full understanding that talking to Phasma about Ren is going to be so easy.   It’s going to be easy to slip into old schoolmate banter, trading gossip about their petty interests and ignoring the Grand Schemes that they’ve been devoting their every waking moment to these past five years.  It’s going to be easy and they’ll fall into it easily and come the day when Phasma learns the truth, she’s going to very easily give him venom for not using this moment confess. 

He’s still not going to do it.

He’ll be guilty by association but this transgression is Ren’s and Hux isn’t going to own it for him.

“He’s not pretty,” is what Hux ends up saying.  “Not at all, but there’s a queer elegance to his face.”

Phasma hums appropriately, showing that she’s listening but not about to interrupt.  Her body is turned towards him and she sips at her glass, blue eyes bright as fire over the well of black wine in her hands. 

“He’s fit.  Very fit….  Almost lovely when he’s not wearing those ridiculous robes.”

“See if you can put him in a First Order uniform,” Phasma says and cracks a smile at Hux when he blinks at her in surprise.  “Unless you’ve done it already?”

“No, can’t say that I have,” Hux says slowly.

“But you’ve thought of it, haven’t you?” she presses, sly grin settling on her lips and glinting in her gaze.  “If he’s so fit I’m sure he’d cut the uniform nicely.  They’re quiet flattering.”  She reaches out a hand and brushes at Hux’s shoulder.  “Go on about him.  Let’s hear the rest.”

“With the right leverage, he’s surprisingly yielding,” Hux continues.  There’s only a sip or two at the bottom of his glass but he takes up the bottle to fill Phasma’s first.  “Though it was an ordeal to uncover that much.  He’s a freak, Rion; I was embroiled in some sort of passive-aggressive, bizarre courtship without ever really consenting to it and at the end of it all, my reward was him surrendering and wasn’t that a goddamned surprise.”

Phasma laughs, hiding her eyes with a hand because, yes, it’s all absurd, but what about their lives isn’t?  Hux smiles and listens to her giggles smooth out.  She musses her fingers through his hair and his heart catches as he watches the pinkish flush of her cheeks.

“What have you gotten yourself into?” she asks him, and he rolls his eyes, shaking his head.

“I keep reexamining everything and wondering if I made a wise choice and I keep finding that, no, I didn’t,” Hux says.  “But, fuck me, if he isn’t addictive.  The prick….”

“ _Does_ he fuck you, then?” Phasma asks, eyes flashing.  It’s Hux’s turn to blush.

“Sometimes,” he says, the word sneaking out quietly even though he hadn’t quite intended it.  Hux watches Phasma drink it up like she empties her wineglass and his fingers are sweating a little as he rubs them against his palm.  “Good lord, did you want me to give you a full account of our bedroom encounters?”

 She does something wicked with her eyebrows that has him sputtering but then just chuckles and puts her glass down.  She stands, she goes to the bar that’s been on the other side of the room this whole time, ignored.

“Well, I do, but I might have to ply you with something a little more potent than mead.”

“Save me now,” Hux sighs and rubs at his temples.  He’s still smiling, despite it, and goes to her, leaving the glass of mead behind because now she has a rather impressive bottle of domestic Abraxan _tekiin_.  “We’ve made this mistake before,” Hux warns her and she isn’t detrimented in the slightest.  Shot glasses are lined up, one after the other, on the marble bartop and Phasma pours down the regiment of them, more than a little sloshing onto the counter.

“Remember what happened?” she asks him as she smirks and recorks the bottle.

“Well, no, and I think that’s the point,” Hux says, but reaches for one of the shots nonetheless.

“So you don’t remember being half naked in my lap for the better part of two hours.”

“ _Pardon?_ ”

“Well, that’s fine if you don’t.  I do.”  Phasma smirks at him and knocks back the shot, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“That didn’t happen, you’re lying,” Hux says, standing frozen with the shot halfway to his mouth.

“You should see how damn red you are right now, Armitage,” she cackles at him.  “You’re blending into your hair.”

“I was _not_ half-naked in your lap!”

“You were!” Phasma insists, all tipsy delight and playful shoves.  The liquor sloshes over the shotglass and splatters on the floor and on Hux’s sleeve.  “You were, you were drunk off your arse and you kept complaining how hot it was so you stripped down and decided the best place to sit was on me.”

“And you _let_ me?”  Hux pushes down on his volume.  He’s not going to start shrieking in embarrassment like he might’ve done when he was a boy.  Doesn’t change the fact that mortification is robbing him of his breath at the moment.

“It’s not as if you were of any great weight at the time,” Phasma says, and just puts another shot glass into Hux’s empty hand.  “You were quite docile.  Charming, even.  You didn’t thrash or make a ruckus, you just sat there and nodded off for the most part.”

“And the other part?” Hux asks.  The look she gives him makes him just down the shots – both of them, one after the other – and wave away whatever answer was going to follow up that devious smile and wink.  “And you just let me,” he repeats.

“I didn’t mind it,” Phasma returns.  “I could never mind you, really.  You have your days when you’re a complete wanker but I appreciate that when you told me you’d stretch your power over all corners of the galaxy, you made good on it and then allowed me my victory in it as well.”

When she holds out her shotglass to him, Hux picks up another and clinks it against hers.

“To your stunning capabilities both on and off the battlefield, Captain,” he says to her.  He means it more than he has meant most things in his lifetime.

“And to your successful campaigns this past decade,” Phasma answers.  “Long live General Armitage Fucking Hux.”

Hux flourishes under her reckless smirk.  The shots go back and the glasses get slammed down on the bartop before Hux reaches to grasp Phasma’s forearm.  She’s already there, doing the same thing to him.  They grin at each other with their eyes wild like they’re brats making plans to rule the universe again.  Then he tugs Phasma in close and throws an arm around her shoulder, drinking in the music her triumphant laughter so it warms him from the inside-out.

“I won’t change for anything,” Phasma says as she bumps her forehead against Hux’s temple.  “So you better extend me the same courtesy.”

“You have my word,” Hux swears to her.  They fall onto the bar stools and trade shots and war stories and when Hux puts his hand on her knee, she covers his fingers with her own.  They both pretend they’re too drunk to realize it.

* * *

Dawn is in two hours.  Kylo Ren waves his hand and the door to Hux’s hotel room opens for him.  The lights are out.  The starlight and city glow is still spilling into the room.  There’s a mess here and there – on the bar and the couch and the floor.  The light in the bathroom is on.  Kylo reaches out with the Force.  Phasma is still here.  For a moment he considers turning and leaving.  But he searches for her; she’s asleep.  Not in the living room.

Kylo ghosts over Hux’s mind – asleep as well.  Their dreams are viscous with the stupor that comes from heavy drinking and that’s enough for Kylo to go looking for them.  His dress makes nary a sound against the hardwood and plush rugs as he walks, barefoot, to the bedroom.  His heeled sandals hang by their straps from his fingers. 

In the hazy darkness and silence of the hotel penthouse, Kylo navigates the hallways.  They carry a perfume that has become familiar in the past few days – something foreign now imbued with the familiar.  Hux has his particular scent….  And now there’s the addition of Phasma’s fragrance.  Something altogether like gun oil, blaster fire and the thorny musk of some stinging flower.  He has no idea what it is, but it’s hers.  He smelled it all over her neck when he had his nose tucked behind her ear.  His feet are aching and the straps of his shoes have pulled blisters on the back of his ankles.  His fingers feel numb and swollen.  He fixed his makeup after he’d left Phasma but it’s all imperfect once again.

Kylo wants nothing more than to sleep for the next lifetime.  He nudges the bedroom door open and there they are.

Phasma is in the bed, on top of the sheets, with her shoes kicked off onto the floor.  Kylo pauses with his hand against the doorway and floats his gaze back and forth over her and Hux, who is lying next to her.  They aren’t touching at all.  The bed is big enough that they wouldn’t need to.  But Hux’s hand is outstretched towards her as he curls up on his side.  Phasma is laying on her back, taking slow, soft breaths and dreaming.  Hux fidgets in his sleep.  His fingers curl into his palm and he makes a displeasured grunt before his brow relaxes.

Kylo considers the foolishness of crawling between them and settling there.  And he only considers it because the yearning for it is so grand he can feel it at the back of his throat like a stone.  He can see Phasma’s eyes opening and her gentle, protective smile lulling him into serenity.  He can feel Hux possessively weaving their fingers together, a warning bite to the back of his neck not to stay out so late again before he falls asleep, breathing warmly against Kylo’s spine.

Kylo turns, his skirts twirling out to the side in a silent flourish as he does.  He leaves.  He goes to the room he rented in hopes of convincing Phasma to make love to him there.  He sleeps in his dress, in his makeup, on the couch, where there couldn’t possibly be any room for anyone else to sleep alongside him.

* * *

The report is placed in her hands and if its contents were alive, it would’ve gnashed her fingers between its jaws.  Phasma stands in the communication bay of the _Finalizer_ and very slowly reviews all the details. 

Days ago, Hux had approached her after her intensive hand-to-hand training session with her troopers.  He was eager enough to deliver the news to her that he couldn’t wait to summon her formally; she was still in her bodysuit, sweaty and bloodied.  KL-4572 had managed to surprise her and she had been punched in the nose and come back with a toothy grin for him.  He looked terrified at first but then she crowed praise at him and he’d been almost giddy with it until she knocked him on his arse. 

Hux came to her and reported that Companies JD, OX, YS and QM had beaten the odds against them.  The Resistance in Tarquin – the capitol city of the planet Ellorett – had all but fled as soon as the First Order had asserted itself.  With them out of the way, it would be even easier to apply pressure to the lamed government left in its wake.  Contained riots were popping up over the districts with the First Order heading the charge.   There were bound to be bloody battles.  Some men would be lost as the stubborn government pushed back, but they would triumph in the end; their sacrifices would bring them and their comrades glory.  Winning Tarquin would be an excellent step in furthering the reach of the First Order to resource-class metropolis planets.  Another gleaming coin in the coffers of Phasma’s allegiance.

In her hands, she holds the complete briefing of how every single one of her troopers had been sabotaged and annihilated when the Resistance suddenly returned, rose up from the shadows with all their teeth bared.   After government forces were whittled down to nothing, at the cost of half her men, the bastards came back and wiped out what was left.  Tarquin had been snatched from their hands.  There was not a single survivor.

But the Resistance envoy who had reached out to deliver this information to the First Order had still done her the kindness of reading every designation of the storm trooper casualties sustained in the three-day slaughter.  Phasma has the recording playing off of the tablet in her hand and the entire communication bay is tomblike with how silent it is.  No one is speaking.  No one is even moving.

“QM-3328, thirty-two, male, concussive shot to the head,” the clipped and clinical voice recites.  “QM-3523, twenty-nine, male, internal hemorrhaging.”

Phasma is having trouble picturing his face but she remembers black hair.

“QM-3565, twenty-four, female, formally executed by blasterfire.”

Shortest of the whole company.  Fast one, though.  No one could catch her.

“QM-4435, thirty, female, blunt trauma to the chest.”

Riot control.  Absolutely ruthless and had a loud, distinctive voice.  Phasma can hear it: “Ma’am, yes Ma’am!”

“QM-4982, twenty-eight, male, disintegrated by air force fire.”

It’s not as if the universe is standing still.  It’s not as if she’s never read casualty reports before.

“YS-1572, nineteen, male, formally executed by blasterfire.”

Setbacks are expected.  Failures are not par for the course but probability can always roll out a defeat.

“YS-2566, twenty-two, male, blood loss.”

“Excuse me, Captain?”

Phasma pauses the playback and turns to where Dopheld Mitaka is standing, looking very sorry to have interrupted with his hands rigid at his side and his eyes pretending to look her straight on but actually focusing somewhere behind her.  She sneers at him though outwardly, she is as inscrutable and stalwart as always.

“Lieutenant,” Phasma acknowledges him.

“General Hux has requested your presence in his office, Ma’am.”

That’s fine.  She already has plans formulated to turn this disaster around.  The R&R initiative can wait.  There are twelve more companies that they can deliver to Tarquin in a matter of hours.  Phasma leaves the communications bay, leaving only the sound of her cape snapping through the air behind.  The holopad with the casualty report is held in her fist like a weapon. 

There is no _Finalizer_ around her, there’s only a line in time that leads her from the bay to the officer’s division and the General’s office.  Phasma walks it with efficiency.  She still waits outside the door to be admitted after chiming the lock.  Even though she could just enter if she entered the right code.  She’s aboard her ship now.  She’s in her armor.  Hux is her general.  It’s that simple and it’s that easy.

The door slides open to admit her and she walks forward and yanks her cape in behind her to keep it from getting caught when it closes.

Hux is sitting at his desk, making grand gestures at his holoconsole which from this side looks like nothing but a rectangle of grey fog.  He glances at her for a moment when she comes to stand at attention in front of the desk.  There are dark circles under his eyes and all of the boyish mischief that he wore back at the hotel has been shed for his greatcoat to take its place.  Phasma’s armor feels featherlight and impenetrable over her body. 

“At ease,” he says after a moment.  Phasma goes to parade rest.  “The events that occurred at Tarquin necessitate a reassessment of current strategy.”

“Yes, Sir,” Phasma says.

“As such, Ellorett and its overtaking will be shelved until further notice,” General Hux tells her.  “Have a report prepared of available companies to take up assignments for the retrieval of stolen resources on the world Drakmar; I want it on my desk by the end of the work cycle.  In one week’s time, the _Finalizer_ will be charting a course to the Storm Trooper Academy on Seryth-7 to integrate the newest graduates into your program.”

Phasma's hot-blooded conviction turns into ice in her stomach and she presses her lips together.

“Permission to speak freely, General,” she says, coolly.

“Granted.”  Hux flicks something across his holoconsole with a callous turn of his fingers.  He leans back in his chair and frowns at her.

“I could have Tarquin retaken in less than a week if allowed the opportunity to implement guerilla infiltration maneuvers,” Phasma tells him.  He’s already shaking his head but she persists.  “The capitol is ravaged and is in no way to receive Resistance reinforcements now that all potential strongholds have been razed.”

“No, Captain, I will not repeat this campaign,” Hux tells her in a sigh that is put-upon and weary.  “Our failing was underestimating the artillery that the Resistance possessed and not accounting for their insufferable ability to not stay quashed when they are defeated.”  Hux presses his fingers between his eyebrows in a way that he would _never_ do in front of any other inferior officer.  “It’s a waste of my precious time and valuable resources to attempt a retaking.  I won’t sanction it.”

“Yes, Sir,” Phasma says, swallowing her anger and letting it smother in her gut.  “I will prepare the report for the operation on Drakmar immediately.”

“Very good, Captain.  You’re dismissed.”

Hux goes back to his holoconsole and Phasma goes back to her division.  She leaves her armor in its case and takes the holopad with her to the office.  The report is put together in less than an hour.  She sends it off.  Then takes the casualty report with her to her training room.  She sets it to full volume and plays it on repeat while she does her reps.

They start blending together, the words in a rhythm, and Phasma memorizes each of them.  She does her situps and listens to that droning, clinical voice list off her troopers and how they died.  She does a pull-up for every single one of them – ninety-six Storm Troopers spent on a fight that they won for the Resistance.  The audio turns over and Phasma drops to her hands and feet and does pushups.

She could’ve been there.  Instead of draining her talent and abilities away on celebrating herself, on indulging in pleasures and iniquities.  She could’ve been winning Tarquin.  If she were there, she would’ve seen the signs. 

The fact that she wasn’t there and could’ve identified the signs if she just bothered to examine them a little more thoroughly – that’s what cuts.  Phasma grits her teeth and roars wordlessly at herself.  She puts one fist behind her back and keeps up with her pushups.  If she were focusing properly…. If she had paid attention to all the factors and read the reports once or twice more, she could’ve realized that the Resistance had put up so little of a fight, that they were surely up to something.  She would’ve bolstered her forces with more troopers.  This all could’ve been avoided.

She wouldn’t have to listen to ninety-six fucking death proclamations while doing her workout tonight.

Phasma shoves herself up to her feet and flies to her punching bag.  Her hands are wrapped but she doesn’t have the patience to stop.  She pummels the bag.  Behind her, the holopad has started the list over again.

“JD-1458, seventeen, male, blasterfire to the neck,” she says along with it and she slams her elbow into the bag. “JD-1577, twenty-six, male, internal hemorrhaging.”  The impact of her heel against the sand-filled canvas is satisfying in a way that nothing else is.  She still feels it when she takes her stance again, bouncing on her toes while she throws jabs and growls out the deaths of every one of her troopers.  Her women and men whom she raised from girls and boys….  They were nothing and then became excellent. And then became cannon fodder.

“Rion.”

Phasma turns her head with her brow still pressed to her forearm, smearing sweat across her skin.  She breathes slowly, deeply, and watches Hux eye the rise and fall of her shoulders.  He’s cut the audio.  The door is closed behind him and he’s without his hat or greatcoat.  He’s got a cigarette in his fingers; the smoke curls up in wafts of blue.

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t bring that shit into my workout space, _Armitage_ ,” Phasma says.  Her voice is scraped and bruised from using perfunctory statistics as war cries.  Her eyes are sharp and dry and when Hux lifts up his commlink and the holograph displaying the time flashes at her, Phasma thinks she’ll probably find her eyes bloodshot if she looks in the mirror.  More hours have passed than she realized.  The pattern became a comfortable numbness….

Obligingly, Hux ashes his cigarette by pinching it out between his fingers and then discards it in the nearest trashcan. 

“If you break your bones trying to punish yourself, I’ll lock you in a bacta tank and not give you an hour’s worth of sick pay,” Hux informs her as he folds his arms across his chest.

“Oh, what do you suffer?” Phasma sneers at him, raking her fingers through her sweaty hair.  “You’re there at the helm, shunting all your pieces into place and raking in their victories like prizes to hoard.  And when they fall, you just place another order to fill up what empty armor they’ve left behind.”

“You’re not fool enough to think that it could be any other way,” Hux says, eyes growing dark.

“Fool enough!” Phasma laughs at him.  “I know what my job is.  I know what role this war has given me.  I broke every expectation and catapulted our storm trooper program to the forefront of history.” She takes slow, measured steps towards him and he doesn’t falter or break her gaze for a second.  “Forgive me if my introspection offends you, _General_ , but sometimes it dawns on me that I’m not some fucking war goddess like some people make me out to be.  I’m instilling our values into thousands of troopers and when I waste their potential on shit like Tarquin, I have the right to be angry at my ‘ _foolishness.’_ Broken bones or not.”

Hux pulls in a sigh and works his jaw.  She’s close enough that she can still smell the tobacco on him and he snags her by the elbow and squeezes.

“ _Please_ , stop hurting yourself, you daft bint, you’re scaring the shit out of me,” he says. 

“It feels better,” Phasma huffs, and her armor has fallen away just like he’s absent of his stupid hat and his stupid coat that makes his shoulders look twice as wide as they really are.

“You look like you could kill a man but you’d keel over right after you did it,” Hux tells her and then lets her go so she can grab a towel and chug down some water.

“I’m allowed one night to resent my failings, I think.  And then tomorrow the routine will resume.”

“The rest of your troopers have been relegated to their bunkers on Abraxas for R&R,” Hux tells her.  “You and I are going to leave the _Finalizer_ and not come back until we’re ready to depart from the planet.  So pack everything because we’re going now.”

“You were always such a tyrant, Armitage,” Phasma says fondly as she leaves the training room with the towel around her neck.

“I’ll meet you at the shuttle bay in an hour,” is what he answers.   He doesn’t see her salute him but ignores her when she yells back to not light another cigarette until he clears her division.

The temperature in her home Star Destroyer is regulated and is kept cool enough to warrant the long-sleeved uniforms and densely-plated armor that everyone aboard wears.  The hallways are dark-paneled but well-lit and sparkling.  It’s different from the heat and swaths of warm colors that fill the cities beneath them as they orbit.  Reds and purples, lustrous gold and pink….  Phasma dresses in her officer’s uniform, stacks civvies and suits into a duffel bag and remembers that Anikalna is staying in the same hotel Hux is.

She promised him that she’d see him again.  Like some pining fool, she lets the thoughts slide back and forth in her mind with every step to the shuttle bay.  Phasma meets Hux there and boards and doesn’t say much beyond a few words of greeting because she’s wondering what Anikalna is wearing tonight.  Wondering if maybe she can catch him sooner than she promised.  Wondering if he’ll open his body to her and start crying again if she just whispers something kind to him.

It has her whole body slack in her seat, the ache and fatigue of the whole day melting as they plunge into the planet’s atmosphere.

“My penthouse has a rather luxurious bathing facilities,” Hux mentions to her as they cab from the port to Plaza Xeiglar.  “You’re welcome to them before you go out for the evening.”

“What makes you think I’m going out?” Phasma asks.

“Your mouth looks hungry,” Hux says.  And doesn’t care to elaborate further, so Phasma leaves it but threads the mystery of Armitage and his comment between her musings about the boy with black hair and bony hands.

“Come with me?” Phasma asks as Hux catches up to her after sending her luggage off with the bellhop to the room he rented for her.  He smiles at her and she starts laughing when it turns all smug on his lips.

“You’ll get us in trouble,” Hux says, distantly, as if he isn’t going to go running into it with her all the way.  She’s still smiling when he leads her to his suite and waves her in the direction of the master bathroom.  “Help yourself.”

“Give me one of your suits,” Phasma says to him.

“The pants won’t fit you; use your own,” Hux says back.

“Well, fetch them from my room then, you arse.”

Phasma waves the door to the bedroom open and standing at the foot of the bed is Kylo Ren, removing his helmet, staring at her with his bare face, familiar.

* * *

It occurs to Kylo as he stands there with his helmet in his hands that Phasma – still in the doorway with the world coming to a halt for her – in a moment, she’s going to be angry.  He has _seconds_ , if he has even that long, to hold on to what he had.  Her mouth is closed and her eyes are wide open and he can see, he can feel it, the lightning transition of her thoughts.

She recognizes his face.  She recognizes his mask.  Phasma looks at his lips and wonders why they aren’t painted.  Phasma finds his eyes and thinks _he’s only a boy_.  She thinks _my boy_ ; (Kylo’s heart stutters and limps like an insect with half of its wings torn away.)  She thinks _Kylo Ren._   She thinks _Hux_.  The thoughts snap together like polarized magnets.

The Force reverberates with her.  A shiver wracks its way up Kylo’s spine and his lips part to gasp.  His moment has gone.  She’s unfrozen and she’s stalking forward and she’s going to _hurt_ him.

Kylo has another shaving of a second to realize that he’s going to let her.  Gladly.

Phasma pulls her hand back, curls her fingers and breaks his nose.  He stumbles back, drops his helmet.  His calves hit the mattress and he falters, crashing down and catching himself on silky sheets.  Blood scatters and blossoms over the 1500 thread count cotton.  It runs down his lips and his chin and soaks into his collar.  Kylo turns to look at her again – and Hux behind her, one hand covering half of his face, as if he’s scandalized and exasperated but wouldn’t look away for a moment – and swallows his own blood.

If she had something to say, she doesn’t say it.  Phasma locks her lips around her words and Kylo – stupidly – goes looking for them anyway.  Her lips pull back.  Her teeth are gleaming.

“I’ll pull yours out,” she says.  His teeth.  She can see how he’s seeing her.  Kylo blinks.  Her words clash back and forth like the vibration keeps answering itself and he retches quietly when more blood pours into his throat.

She’s on him when he gets back to his feet.  Her hands around his shoulders, pushing and throwing and slamming him into the wall.  His skull collides with hers when she crashes her forehead against his brow.  Her hands go around his throat and her nails – they’re clipped back and clean – dig into his bloodied neck and scratch.  Her face is close and when his dizziness starts ebbing away, he finds her eyes pressing like knives into his lies.

“You wretch,” she roars at him.  “You _nothing_.  I respected you!  You knew.  You knew who I was and you thought you were so fucking clever….”

She pulls him forward by his neck and slams his head into the wall again.  Ren winces and coughs and heaves more blood down his chin.  Flecks of it land on Phasma’s ash-white face and her bared teeth.

“Ma’am, I didn’t—” he’s saying and she howls into his lungs, she’s so close, so loud.

“Don’t _try_ to endear yourself to me!  I hear it, you’re trying to call to me again and your tears aren’t sweet now, they’re like bile.”  She lets his throat go only to tear her nails down the tracks on his cheeks.  Kylo gasps and his head goes back and she’s hurting him but half of him wishes she was tearing the skin off his face.  “ _Fuck you_.  You’re a disgrace to the First Order.”

Hux has very carefully drawn closer to them both.  When she turns, Phasma finds him only a few steps away.  He’s blanched and his motions are slow and telegraphed, hand already extending, entreating.

Phasma’s answer is to backhand him across the face.  He can’t keep his balance and in two bewildered steps, Hux is on the floor.  Halfway to his ruddied cheek, Hux’s fingers are trembling.  Like twin flames burning in the dark, his eyes search and find her, outraged for an explanation.  But when he opens his mouth to demand it, Phasma snarls at him.  A wordless, feral snap of her maw, closing around her respect and trust for him and ripping clean through.  He recoils, shocked into silence. 

“I can’t believe you’d forsake my trust for a _hole_ to fuck,” she whispers, pinning him with her cold eyes.

Phasma steps over him when she passes.  As if he’s detritus littering the floor and not her General and commanding officer.  Kylo reaches after her and tastes how she wants to stay, she wants to hurt them more.  She wants to break everything in sight. 

The door closes behind her.  She leaves with the intention of being as far from them both as humanly possible.

Hux gets up and goes tearing after her.  Kylo slides to the floor and curls himself over his knees, breathing deeply and warring with his pain and arousal.  He hears Hux and Phasma arguing in the living room.  After a moment, he lays down, cracking his nose back into socket before licking the blood off his gloves.  He thinks of the scratches on his face and the anger that she forced down his throat and it feels sticky and too heavy in his stomach.  Against his thigh, his erection is rubbing just enough to chafe but Kylo ignores it.  Waits for it to wilt away. 

She’s beautiful and cruel and mighty and Kylo has a faraway impulse to drag himself out to her on his knees and see if she’ll grant him retribution if he offers himself to her violence but….  He reaches out.  Hux is legitimately panicking.  He’s going to lose her.  And she’s completely justified and he knew this would happen but he let it happen anyway.

Phasma is….  Blocking him.  Somehow. He can’t get a read on her no matter how hard he tries.  But the Force is wrapped around her like a shroud of spines and each one of them is pointing outwards.  No one is getting in.  No one ever will again, if she needs it that way.  She can sustain it easily. 

Nights ago, her rough fingers were sweeping so gently through his hair.  She called him ‘pretty flower’ and he latches onto how, not even two minutes ago, he wanted to call her ‘Mama’ again to try and stem that fury.  Bring back the sweetness she’d given him.

She called him _hers_.  Even if it was just a fleeting, reptilian urge that would’ve been quashed by whatever sensibility might’ve come next.  Like Hux pressing glasses of water into his hands when his throat is cracked from moaning too much.  Like the marks on his neck, days old, weeks old, hours old reminders of being _had_ and _used_ and _kept…._    He was hers for that moment only.

He was a fool to try.  He’s still a fool for wanting it now.

* * *

Hux wants to grab Phasma but her eyes say that she’s one snag away from responding with violence.  He stays rooted and keeps his hands by his side – by rote, his shoulders want to go back and he has to force his chin to stay tucked – and she still has one hand on the door.

“Don’t leave,” he says, and he’s using the voice he uses on the bridge.  Calm and collected and in control and everyone will answer to him, but it fails him in the last second when his volume vanishes.

“I don’t want to be here.”  But she’s not leaving; the door is still shut, despite her hand upon it.  Her hair is hanging in her face and her hands are all bruised up and chafed.  The circles under her eyes are dark like slices of stone fruit and she’s not crying.  She’s cutting into Hux for every second that he makes her linger.  Because she will.  She might’ve walked over him but he’s asking her to stay and she’s unfailing to him, even now.  Hux grinds his molars together and goes to her side.  He doesn’t reach for her though he wants to, still.  She’s got blood on her cheeks and he’d thumb it off for her.  Or dab it with his fucking handkerchief if he had it on him.

“What has he done to you?” Hux asks her.  “I admit that I knew he involved himself with you and I was silent about it.  I owe apologies to you and I’ll make them – I swear it – but you wouldn’t bloody him like that unless he deserved it.  What happened?”

Phasma watches him for a long moment.  Long enough for Hux to know the taste of his own clamorous heartbeat as he can feel it surging up the back of his throat and when she speaks, it’s only after she’s brushed back her hair and taken a stance like she’s pulled her chromium armor over every visible inch of her.

“If I might make myself perfectly candid,” Phasma says – Hux can almost hear the modulation of her helmet – “I am uncomfortable with discussing anything with you at this time.  As I see it, there is no reason for me to be here.  I’ll be taking my leave now.”

She waits.  Waits for him to dismiss her like she’s standing in his office aboard the _Finalizer_. As if he has the power to make her stay right now, force her to answer him, to hear him out.  Hux’s shoulders go back.  His chin tilts up. He clasps his hands behind his back.

“By your leave,” he says.  _Dismissed, Captain._   And she goes without sparing another glance towards him.  The door closes behind her and he didn’t have a trail of her cape to watch but she flicked her hand towards herself anyway – a habit. 

The quiet in her wake is callous.  Behind the fire and fangs she bore in the bedroom and its ashes spread in her departure, what’s left feels like broken bones with all the marrow scraped out.  Hux stands in silence for a moment, staring at the closed door as if it’s the last standing structure in a crumbling house.  He leaves it behind him because it’s closed now and trying to go through it – go after her again – would be in vain.

Ren is still in the bedroom, pulling his bloodied robes away from himself.  His curls are flyaway and his back is sweaty and when he turns around to look at Hux, there are red and pink lines all down his face, his cheeks, his neck.  She’s wrecked him.  He’s beautiful and his nose is bloodied and bruised, the break stretching across the bridge from eye to eye in a black ribbon.  Ren throws the wad of his cloak into a corner and sinks back to the floor at the foot of the bed, knees up by his head, his naked hands in his hair.

There’s blood smeared all over his fingers and arms from where he’s wiped it from his face. When he looks up, Hux can only see the shining darkness of his eyes, though he can imagine those lush lips still pink and sticky with blood.

He goes to him.  Like water following the path of least resistance, Hux lets his body be drawn towards Ren’s and kneels before him, reaching and pushing his fingers through those unruly curls and pressing Ren back to the bed.  He goes, pliant, eyes wet and angry, but he’s gorgeous as ever.  Hux can still feel his cheek stinging from where Phasma slapped him – backhanded, like he wasn’t worth the grace of her open palm – and he pushes the ache of it away while he crawls over Kylo and counts his wounds.

“It’s as you said,” Ren whispers while Hux presses into his space, “there is no comparison.”

Hux’s stomach squeezes at Ren’s words. 

“How so?” he asks.  He tells himself he’s known he was right all along.  There’s no fear in hearing the reasons, not from Ren’s lips.

“She treated me like she loved me,” Ren says.  His eyes are staring through everything.  “She was so gentle with me; I felt wanted.”

Hux goes as still as his tense and aching spine will let him.  He looks into Kylo’s eyes and feels as transparent as the windows letting the dawn spill in.  And Ren goes on.

“No one in the universe had ever given me what she offered,” he says.  “She’s perfect….  She was perfect and she saw who I was and hated me.”

“You deceived her,” Hux says, still trying to find the place where he’s supposed to be in the depths of Ren’s dark, dark eyes. 

“You did too,” Ren accuses in the lightest murmur.  And there he is; Hux sees himself now.  Blamed.  Just as guilty. Still, he presses his hands beneath Ren’s strong jaw and holds him.  “Don’t try and make yourself feel better by stitching up the cuts she left in me,” Ren says.  “I don’t want your hands in them.”

A hot scratch of anger claws up the back of Hux’s neck.  He stands, his feet planted on either side of Ren’s hips, and keeps his gaze trained on Ren’s ruined face.  His black curls against the sheets, his blood still everywhere….  Tears have slipped out now and Ren scrapes them away with his dirty fingers.

“Have you taken leave of your sense?” Hux says, fingers folding into fists.  Ren’s still there, stretched out, shirtless, pale and red and black.

“Go away, Hux,” Ren says.  His eyes close and more tears clean away the bloodstains in thin lines.  “Get away from me.”

Hux backs away and has to focus all his energy into not kicking Ren in the chest.  One dark eye opens because Ren knows those thoughts.

“Why don’t you get out of my fucking room, _Ren_ ,” Hux says, oh so very cordially with an imperious finger pointing to the door, “if you find my company so disruptive to your melodrama?”

“Does it bruise your pride to be rejected?” Ren sneers at him but stands nonetheless.  “Phasma rebuffed you like you were just her C.O., overstepping your bounds.  She didn’t want your feeble consolation and neither do I.”

“ _Get out_.”

Ren leaves. 

Hux sits on the bed and then lays on it even though his every muscle is twitching in fury; he’s restless, wanting to pace, wanting to break.  He lies absolutely still and stares at the browning spots of blood on the sheets. 

He could’ve fixed everything.  Phasma looked at him like her past didn’t exist.  And Ren wouldn’t see him at all. Until he decided to yank Hux’s failures to the surface before they could drown beneath Hux’s unfailing dignity.  Unfailing….  As if dignity had anything to do with why Hux had gone to Ren’s side and invaded his space.

As if he ever had any dignity to begin with.  And what use is it to him with no one there to watch him hold all his shambling pieces together?  Hux plods over to the bar and lines up shot glasses along its countertop.  He only has enough black mead left to fill three of them and he downs two and leaves the third in case someone, for whatever reason, decides to come back.  Then he can throw it at them in a fit of completely justified upset.  The bottle of _tekiin_ makes a better companion, anyway.

Hux doesn’t sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha wow.
> 
> Okay, so, for those of you who have been paying attention, I started this fic back in September and it has gone through a lot and is **still** going through a lot. I decided to deviate from my plan of making it a oneshot to breaking it in a couple of parts, so here is the first. A huge, enormous thank you to my beta reader Jai, also known as [firstordershitposting](http://firstordershitposting.tumblr.com/) who has been magnanimous with me on this story and continues to be so.
> 
> This story is for my girlfriend Sasha, who loves Captain Phasma and Kylux so I really wanted to give her something good to read. Ilu bb and I'm sorry you still have to wait for the ending. XD Thank you for being such an inspiration to me with your art. You've been working so hard the past few months and I'm thankful for it every day.


End file.
